By Dennis Ford, Founder & CEO, LSN

At LSN, my five business development executives talk to about 35 CEOs each week, all of whom are in fundraising mode.  If we also consider the conferences and seminars we attend, LSN’s business development staff has spoken to close to a thousand fundraising executives since the company was founded.  Now, that is not a bad sample size.  At LSN, we always begin with three questions that will help us net out the status of the entrepreneurs we are starting a dialogue with.

The first question is, “Are you indeed fundraising?”  One would think this question is a binary matter…but it’s not.  The answers range from “Yes, we’re totally dedicated to raising money,” to “We are just sticking with our private network of investors,” to “We plan on starting a campaign soon.” What these answers reveal is how committed you are to raising capital, and that’s why it’s the most important question for us; LSN engages only with dedicated fundraisers.

The second question is, “Do you know how long it will take to raise a financing round, from start to finish?”  This is a bit of a trick question.  From inexperienced entrepreneurs and from executives who haven’t been fundraising as of late, we often hear answers ranging from 3-9 months, which have found is highly optimistic; in our experience, closing a round usually takes 9-18 months.

The third question is, “Do you know how much a 12-month fundraising campaign will cost?”  This question provides some interesting answers.  Many CEOs haven’t drawn up a yearly fundraising budget at all, and when they put pen to paper to quantify the issue, they realize that it will take a lot of money to go out and raise money.  Figure 1 provides the typical cost of the essential components of your campaign:

We use these three questions to gauge whether the CEO has done their homework on what it will take to raise a financing round and has a good grasp of the commitment required.  There is a lot more to raising capital than simply declaring that you’re raising capital and then staying within a limited region or a small network.

By Michael Quigley, Director of Research, LSN

Cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S., represents a massive market for life science products. LSN’s tracks both companies working on new technologies in the cardio space as well as investors looking to fund those technologies through our two data platforms. Looking at both companies and investors can provide a dynamic picture of the space as a whole.

Of the cardio technologies currently in development or in clinical trials worldwide, LSN has identified 561 that are therapeutic and diagnostic products and 238 that are medical devices. We then looked at cardio sub-indications to determine which ones have the most new-product development. (See Figure 1.)

For entrepreneurs working in these sub-indications, this figure should provide some insight into the competitive landscape. Products targeting hypertensive diseases, for example, have significantly more competition than products targeting chronic rheumatic heart disease. When seeking capital, it is crucial to understand the products you are competing with and what differentiates yours so that you can convince investors that your opportunity deserves their capital more than others.

The vast majority of therapeutics and diagnostics products and medical devices that are targeting cardio are from companies based in the U.S. However, several other countries are a source of innovation as well. (See Figures 2 and 3.)

It is interesting to note that while Israel isn’t among the top 11 countries for emerging cardio therapeutics and diagnostics, it is in second place in the medical device space. Asian countries make up three of the top five countries developing cardio therapeutics and diagnostics, while only Japan is in the top 11 for emerging cardio devices. Also worth noting is the significant innovation in both areas from Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Switzerland.

Now let’s take a look at which countries and regions cardio investors are interested in based on their current exposure. (See Figure 4.)

Most investors are looking to invest in the U.S, which is in line with where the majority of innovation is taking place for this indication. Investors are also directing their attention globally and to Western Europe, Canada, and Eastern Europe respectively—areas where we also found innovation taking place. An area that appears to have a significant imbalance between innovation and investment interest is Asia, particularly in the therapeutics space. We have recently increased our efforts in this region; however, it still could remain true that the emerging Asian cardiovascular market is currently underserved when it comes to capital.

The types of investors interested life science products targeting cardio are fairly consistent with what we have seen in the life science space as a whole. (See Figure 5.)

All ten categories of investors have at least some level of interest in cardio, and as we have noticed for other indications, venture capital, private equity, and family office investors have the most. The interest across all ten categories highlights the importance of looking at all classes of investors when fundraising to help increase your odds for success. We look forward to providing this level of analysis in other indications areas in future issues, so be sure to keep an eye out for the indication relevant to you.

By Tom Crosby, RESI Conference Manager, LSN

Last week, LSN announced the RESI Conference’s new Commercializing Medtech Innovation panel, which will bring insights from investors who focus on devices that are nearing commercialization. This week, LSN is proud to announce another brand new panel in the Medtech Investor Panels track — this time, featuring investors who focus on earlier-stage opportunities. The In Development / Clinical Investors Medtech panel will offer viewpoints and advice from a diverse group of investors.

Moderated by Vicki Anastasi, Vice President & Global Head of Medical Device and Diagnostic Research at ICON, the audience will hear from:

Cary Adams, Founder, Almond Tree Capital

Jeff Sheldon, Managing Director, CitareTX

Ibraheem Badejo, Senior Director, New Ventures, Johnson & Johnson Innovation

Doug Fisher, Partner, InterWest Partners

Panelists will share their opinions on why medical device investments have been surging in 2014, and how entrepreneurs can capitalize on the trend. What is the path of least resistance from prototype to allocation? How do device entrepreneurs identify and qualify organizations that are actively investing early? What are the pros and cons of taking a venture capital investment, and what are the roles of other sources of funding? With a panel drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds, the session will offer an interesting perspective for any device company looking to take its technology to the next level.

By Lucy Parkinson, Senior Research Manager, LSN

Last week, the LSN research team closed out the first month of the last quarter, tallying and analyzing the investor mandates gathered throughout October. Our researchers spoke with 109 deal-sourcing executives last month. As usual, these investors were highly diverse, hailing from 20 countries and representing 9 investor categories; 12 of the 109 were investors from family offices and private-wealth funds. (See Figure 1.)

LSN analysts continue to find that investors are showing slightly more interest in medical technology than biotech therapeutics and diagnostics. (See Figure 2.) However, most investors are open to funding a variety of life science companies, including those in the supplier and engineering sector (which includes software companies) and R&D service providers. Some are also open to biotech opportunities we class as ”Other,” which includes industrial biotech and agricultural biotech start-ups.

What stage of product development must a company be in to attract these investors? Of the therapeutics investors we interviewed, the greatest number are interested in products that have entered Phase I trials, but many will consider drugs that are earlier or later in the pipeline. (See Figure 3.)

The results were similar for medical devices: most investors are interested in products that have entered the clinical phase. However, we also spoke with many investors interested in devices that have already received FDA approval and are now on the market; many medtech investors see opportunities for devices that have already been proven scientifically and now require capital to build market share. (See Figure 4.)

Finally, where are these investors looking to invest? We found that more than a quarter of the investors we spoke with are willing to invest anywhere in the world. (See Figure 5.) The rest are focusing on one or more specific regions, with the U.S. and Western Europe being the most popular, unsurprisingly. Our researcher at our new office in Thailand, however, reached a number of investors with a specific focus on life science opportunities in Asia or Oceania.

Month after month, LSN researchers connect with a diverse group of investors who are interested in funding life science research, technology, and products. These investors differ greatly in terms of strategy and risk profiles, but all have an appetite for new technologies in the biotech and medtech sectors. If you’re a fit for a firm’s mandate, they may be the right partner to move your company toward commercial success.

By Tom Crosby, RESI Conference Manager, LSN

At the next RESI Conference in January, LSN will expand its Medtech Track. One of several new panels, Commercializing Medtech Innovation will focus on investors who consider later-stage opportunities, such as devices that are about to reach commercialization or those that have recently been approved and begun shipping. In keeping with the goals of the RESI Conference, this session will be compelling for earlier-stage device entrepreneurs as well, as panelists will discuss the nuances of emerging companies building relationships with investors.

Moderated by David Cassak, Managing Partner at Innovation in Medtech, the audience will hear from:

Dennis Purcell, Senior Managing Partner, Aisling Capital

Garheng Kong, Managing Partner, Healthquest Capital

Janice Borque, Managing Director, Hercules Technology Growth Capital

Michael Bianco, General Partner, Life Science Equity Partners

Mark Chin, Vice President, Longitude Capital

Panelists will introduce and cover the areas of the medical technology field where they see the greatest opportunities, and they will discuss how they work with medical technology companies ready to launch a product. How and when should you approach investors who are interested in the product commercialization stage? How do such investors assess your product’s market opportunity? How do you create a path from launch to profitability? Panelists will also discuss preferences for investment structure, region and team requirements, and how to better identify organizations that are actively investing in device companies that are near, or have reached, commercialization.

By Michael Quigley, Director of Research, LSN

At the beginning of October, LSN established a presence in the Asia-Pacific region so we could increase the number of mandates from investors who are unreachable during our normal business hours. Since that initiative began, we have interviewed more than 25 deal-sourcing executives interested in the life science space. These investors are based in several countries, including Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, and Singapore. A significant reason for this success could be that the investors in these countries tend to be much more responsive to cold calling, which is less common in the region, and emailing. However, when analyzing the mandates from these investors, it appears that their desire for quality deal flow from U.S. and European companies is also motivating them to share their investment criteria with us.

Of the investors we have spoken with in the Asia-Pacific thus far, over 50% are global in their investment mandate. This is a higher figure than we have seen throughout North America and Europe, where about 30% of investors we’ve contacted are open to investing globally. Asia-Pacific investors maintain broad investment horizons to focus on the best opportunities available. In other respects, Asia-Pacific investors have broadly similar interests to investors in other parts of the world, with a slight advantage in overall interest in devices over therapeutics, and opportunities with early clinical data showing the strongest level of interest. . Unlike U.S. and European investors, however, many of the investors in this region are looking for companies with technology that is being developed for their local marketplace or could be adapted to it—a strategy worth considering if you haven’t already.

The Asia-Pacific region represents a massive pool of capital that entrepreneurs in the highly competitive market for life science venture capital should not be ignoring. If your company is in therapeutics, diagnostics, or medtech-devices, and if it is looking for a lead investor or the last member of a syndicate, be aware that Asia-Pacific investors are looking for such opportunities. LSN looks forward to uncovering more mandates from this region and will keep you updated on our findings.

 

By Dennis Ford, Founder & CEO, LSN

Executing a successful fundraising campaign in the life sciences space requires organization, professionalism, determination, a great technology, and an outstanding team. LSN has worked with hundreds of companies in this capacity—companies that are at all stages of development, in regions around the world, and pursuing various types of technology. We’ve been watching as the latest process for fundraising has surfaced, and I wanted to share what we see as the ten steps.

1. Company Assessment

The first step in your fundraising campaign should be a general assessment of your intentions and your company. The questions to be answered include: How much capital do you plan to raise? What will the funding be used for? What are the R&D milestones? Elucidate the risks and how you plan to mitigate them. And calculate your company’s current valuation. Painting a rosy picture is the kiss of death. Being up front, candid, and honest validates your credibility.

Most important, determine how quickly you need the capital. Note that it takes 9 to 18 months to get funded.

Raising capital is resource intensive, which raises another question: Who is going to take on this job? Recently during a three-month campaign, LSN staff identified 360 global-investor targets, sent out 600 emails, and made 400 phone calls in order to get 25 meetings. Are you or your designated point person the right one to handle this job?

When answering these and the many other questions that come up during a company assessment, it is best to consult with several trusted and reputable sources to fully assess your opportunity and determine how best to position yourself.

2. Marketing Collateral

When you have a firm grasp on how you are planning to position yourself to potential investors and who will be reaching out, you need to develop marketing materials that clearly and succinctly describe your opportunity. Essential materials include a logo, tagline, elevator pitch, executive summary, PowerPoint presentation, and a website.

These materials will be your face to the investment community, and as such, they should be drafted with careful consideration. It is crucial that you do not drown potential investors in reams of data and articles from scientific journals supporting your science. Don’t try and prove the market for your product; investors already understand the market-size element. Tell the story of the technology; tell the story of how the management team found each other and bonded; make the story simple and easy to grasp.

When crafting your materials, remember that investors are busy. Some have told LSN that they receive 500 to 800 solicitations a week, so you have to quickly and adroitly communicate your value. Initially, you may get five to ten seconds of an investor’s time on your home page. The purpose of your marketing materials is to pique an investor’s interest enough that he or she agrees to set up a meeting to learn more, not to close a deal.

Interested investors will thoroughly review all your data and journals at the due diligence stage, but they won’t invest time up front to review your materials if your opportunity isn’t presented in a way that clearly demonstrates its value to them.

3. Global Target List

Make no mistake about it: fundraising is a numbers game. Only using personal networks and staying regional is a waste of time. You need to find as many investors as you can who are a fit for your sector and the stage of your company. The only way to do this is to aggregate a list of global investors who are a potential fit for your firm and canvass them through email and phone.

Identifying potential investors is no small task. With investors moving in and out of the space, and with many investors maintaining a very low profile, this step can take a considerable amount of time to do well.

Here at LSN, we identify investors using a number of methods, including previous financing rounds, conference attendee lists, news feeds, and networking events. When looking for potential investors, you need to consider your company’s stage of development, technology type, indication area, region, and the amount of capital you are looking to raise.

You should be looking for investors who have historically invested in companies similar to yours or for partners that have experience in your field of medicine. When looking for investors, you will more than likely come across those who tend to look at later stage opportunities. These investors should absolutely be included in your list. Although they aren’t an appropriate investor for your company at this stage, by beginning a dialogue with them now, you can keep them abreast of what you are doing, which will make securing later-stage financing much more efficient.

Using the LSN investor platform, our business development folks can generally identify from 250 to 400 investors across ten categories for a given opportunity based on fit. We will canvass them, and those who show an interest are the ones we go after and concentrate on. These targeted campaigns uncover investors who are active and looking to fulfill their investment mandates. If we target 400 investors, that group usually gets whittled down to 60 to 80 investors who merit some time. That’s how the numbers game works. In turn, that group of 60 to 80 investors is narrowed down to 20 to 30, then to 10 to 12, and eventually to the 2 or 3 that will invest in the round. All this takes time and focus and leads us to the next part of the process, which is getting the tools in place to handle a list of 400 investor candidates and the associated tasks.

4. Cloud-Based Application

Staying on top of that many contacts can be overwhelming; however, it is made drastically easier through cloud-based applications such as SaleForce.com. Such applications provide a list-management and task-management system. Note that if you’re using a spreadsheet, you have already lost the battle. SalesForce.com ($5.00 a month) can help you store, organize, and classify the data and contact information for all of the investors on your list, as well as allow you to set follow-up dates to better understand who you need to be contacting and when. Other useful pieces of infrastructure to consider include an email-tracking system, such as Constant Contact or iContact, that allows you to see when people are opening and clicking on your emails to determine your hottest targets. These applications are also online-content generators, which you can use to publish articles and other content surrounding your opportunity.

5. Conference List and Outbound Campaign

With your cloud infrastructure in place, you need to organize your road show. You need to determine which investment and partnering conferences are taking place during your campaign and which ones you should be attending. Ideally, you will be able to book conferences across the world to meet with various investors. Additionally, you should be aligning your outreach to try and book meetings with investors who have offices near the conferences you are attending even if they aren’t going to the event. Investors tend to be more responsive if you tell them the brief window of time during which you will be in town, and you should take full advantage of that. A conference-only strategy is a nonstarter. You need to dig in and use every available means to get out of office and in front of investors. I call it the last three feet: when you stick out your hand and introduce yourself, the game is afoot!

6. Campaign Execution

It takes money to make money. One year on the global fundraising trail is going to cost you $80,000 to $100,000. Marketing collateral, website development, road trips, conferences, and regional and global travel—it all adds up. In fact, the latest trend is for investors to demand that 10 to 20% of the funds be set aside for future market development. Budgeting and capital planning is all part of adroit execution. This is where the rubber meets the road. With your materials, infrastructure, and plan in place, you need to physically begin the outreach to potential investors. This should be done through an email-marketing campaign that coincides with a phone-canvasing campaign that is tracked and managed through your cloud infrastructure. You need to focus on taking cold leads off the table and moving forward with the good ones.

7. Scheduling and Logistics

When you get investors interested, you need to act quickly to book meetings. Whether it’s over the phone or the more preferable in-person meeting, you need to get it on the schedule quickly. If it’s an in-person meeting, tackle the logistics equally as quickly. Identify your transportation and accommodations for the trips you will be taking. By working out some of the details of your travel plans during the outreach phase, you have the opportunity to meet with more investors in the regions you will be visiting.

8. Meetings

When attending meetings and conferences, you should bring your A game. You should be prepared to answer all questions investors may pose and take diligent notes on the points they make. It is also important to not hide the risks associated with your investment at this stage. Investors understand that life science investing is inherently high risk, and if they uncover something later in the due diligence phase that you didn’t tell them up front, they may feel their trust was misplaced and the deal could sour. You should view networking at conferences and events as very much a part of your job, you never know who may be able to connect you to who so it is important to always remain professional about what you are doing while managing to shake as many hands as possible.

9. Conference Report and Road Trip Reports

Throughout the various meetings and conferences, you will be getting a lot of different feedback, both positive and negative, from investors. As you continue to move forward, you should be aggregating all of this feedback and periodically be making full reports for colleagues based on what you hear. What are the most common reasons investors decline to meet or move forward? What seems to grab their attention? What are their most common questions? Answers to these questions and others should all be included in the report and should be taken into consideration when you tweak the marketing materials. In fact, if the feedback seems to point strongly in a direction that is different from the one you are currently pursuing, you should consider pivoting your company. This report should be shared throughout your company and, in particular, with your board to keep them up to speed with the fundraising campaign and to demonstrate how the marketplace is viewing the opportunity.

10. Investor Follow-Up

Properly using the cloud infrastructure can make your follow-up process much more efficient. You can set dates for follow-up at any time using the task- and relationship-management software. You should absolutely hold yourself to the dates you set. Moving interested investors deeper into the due diligence stage and keeping later-stage investor abreast of your progress will save you time and increase your odds for success. Also, you need to be constantly parsing and changing your target list to reflect your hottest leads to ensure you spend more time working towards your best targets and do not spend hours trying to contact investors who aren’t interested.